ARTIST TAKEOVER

JESSE RIESER — FOLKLORE
July 29 – August 30
Artist-Attended Opening Reception:
Saturday, August 2, 1-3 p.m.
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Each summer, Bentley Gallery invites a talented local artist to “takeover” the space for a month-long solo exhibition. This August, we are pleased to host guest artist Jesse Rieser, an internationally recognized, Phoenix-based photographic artist. For the past decade, Rieser has carefully constructed a photographic world built on the foundation of examining uniquely American themes. In this world, you will find one-time paradisal places and memories framed by our modern anxieties about the past, present, and future — examining our rituals and the artifacts left behind.

For his exhibition Folklore, Rieser will be displaying 28 photographs from his upcoming monograph American Hypnosis published by PowerHouse Books. From the publication: “By definition, hypnosis is the induction of a state of consciousness in which a person loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or direction. These longterm works are the transmissions of a citizen who seems comfortable sitting with the knowledge that he is as excited by his home as he is alarmed by it.”

Rieser will also be previewing a selection from Guns & Pizza: “Firearms are deeply ingrained in what it means to be American and our history of the American West— a history of celebrated individualism paradoxically based on our freedom and that of the conquering settler and oppressor.”

Jesse Rieser was born in the Ozarks and attended Arizona State University where he majored in photography and art history while attending the Herberger Institute of Art and Design. His work has been profiled by The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, Wired, National Geographic and celebrated by Communication Arts, American Photography Annual (AP) 25x, and Critical Mass Top 50 (3x). He has been named a One Club Young Gun, a Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward recipient, a winning exhibiting artist of the Klompching Gallery Fresh Award, and an official nominee for the 2025 Grand Prix Pictet.

Please join us on Saturday, August 2, 1-3 p.m. for the artist-attended opening reception of FOLKLORE.